Published: March 22, 2008 02:05 pm      

RCPI study expected late April, early May

Results from the Regional Community Policing Institute study conducted at the Richmond Police Department earlier this year will likely be available to the public in late April or early May.

Tracy Schiller, Kentucky RCPI training specialist, said five weeks is a “rough estimate” for when the report will be given to RPD Chief Larry Brock.

The chief invited the assessment team into the department to evaluate multiple issues as they relate to community policing during the study, which was conducted Jan. 28 through Feb. 1. The study additionally is designed to help RPD officials gain an understanding of how the community perceives the department.

In addition to meeting with several groups and attending Richmond functions during their stay, the RCPI team also interviewed more than 150 citizens from a variety of backgrounds.

After the completion of the week-long study, Schiller said there is a long and time-consuming process that the assessors must go through to complete a report about their findings. Nine assessors, including a retired business executive, two college professors and six with backgrounds in law enforcement, performed the study. Each assessor compiles a report of their own findings once the week is complete.

Once the individual reports are written, the team leader compiles them into a single document, doing some “wordsmithing” to make it easy to read and understand, Schiller said.

“You will get a document that is usually about 90 pages long,” he said.

That single report will be given to Brock for review before it is released to the public.

“Occasionally, it is not all that uncommon, that a bit of factual information may be incorrect — numbers, things like that,” Schiller said. “We are looking for help from the chief to kind of get that corrected. What we don’t change is any kind of perception or senses from the public ... those perceptions are needed to be realized so they can be addressed properly.”

The goals of the assessment are “to provide a useful tool for direction and assistance in transitioning or advancing community policing efforts in a community, to provide baseline information for use by the department in developing its community-oriented policing efforts and to provide on-site organizational development assistance,” an overview from the on-site assessment process states.

“We encourage the department to make it well known and to use this as kind of a road map of things they can do and things they can put in place to create a more community-oriented atmosphere,” said RCPI Associate Director Ed Brodt.



Kelly Foreman can be reached at kforeman@richmondregister.com or 624-6694.